


For My Own

by impossiblewanderings



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Emma gets drunk, F/M, Jefferson attempts to be helpful, and some creepy Wonderland flashbacks, and some more Christmas!, and somewhere Alice approves, some Mad Swan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblewanderings/pseuds/impossiblewanderings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma has always avoided Christmas - but this year someone has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For My Own

* * *

_-I don’t want a lot for Christmas,_ _there’s just one thing I need-_

* * *

 

__

There were always going to be cracks, after Wonderland. Eventually some of the shards of his mind were going to burrow inwards, and he drowns in dreams of blonde hair and stinging drugged smoke. Even Grace cannot fill the void Alice left, slipping down the rabbit hole. But now, as he walks, and the Sheriff brushes by him, with her fresh scent and the crunch of snow under his boots, he is briefly, inexplicably happy.

* * *

 

For Emma, Christmas has always been a time to climb into a bottle and hide for at least a week. She considers it self-preservation, being continuously numb enough to ignore the glow of Christmas lights in the dusk, or notice parents shopping for their loved, wanted children. But as she walks in the still air of midnight, she is not alone. Her sleeve brushes his as they pass.

* * *

 

When Jefferson pushes open the door to Granny’s, the first thing he sees is her. She is always glorious - the feel of her in his arms; even drugged, she sleeps with a frown, the Saviour battling dragons in her sleep- but now, she is all loveliness. There are empty glasses scattered across the table, and Emma’s curls shine as she sways gently in her seat. He has always enjoyed the freedom that drugs bring - he remembers Alice, her pupils widening until her eyes were storm-black as they sat together beneath the Caterpillar’s mushroom - and Emma Swan looks delightful when she is intoxicated.

* * *

 

Emma blinks as a steaming mug slides in front of her nose, releasing the enticing aroma of eggnog into the air. She is well on her way to being drunk - now that Henry has gone home there’s no need to abstain from her usual holiday blues cure-all - and her dark memories of Christmases past are blurry and far away. She focuses on the glint of his smirk first, then the sharp blue of his eyes.

“Is it drugged?” She asks, torn between suspicion and amusement, and the Hatter laughs.

* * *

 

“I don’t drug people on the night before Christmas. Not even law enforcement.”

Emma furrows her brow and stares at him with an intensity that is equal parts disturbing and adorable.

“You know about my super-power, right? I can tell when anybody is lying. Anybody in this whole town. Even you.”

She pokes an accusing finger nearly into his eye to emphasise her point.

“And am I?”

Emma wobbles back to study him from a distance.

“No.”

Jefferson grins his most charming, madcap, irresistible grin and leans forward until he is inches from her rose-petal lips.

“Then have a drink with me, _Emma_.”

* * *

 

“Do you need me to walk you home, Sheriff?”

Emma presses her face against the cold brick of the alley beside Granny’s. It keeps the world from spinning, helps her ignore the grin on Jefferson’s smug face.

“Don’t wanna go there. It’s weird.” She grumbles, bracing her forehead on the wall.

She turns to face him.

“You know? It’s just really…really weird with my parents there. Oh my God - my dad is _Prince Charming_!”

He chuckles and then her stomach revolts, narrowly missing his shoes.

* * *

 

“And don’t call me Sheriff.” She snarls, when she has finished vomiting into the snow.

Jefferson laughs and walks around Emma where she crouches against the wall. The air is crisp and clean and his heart is pounding under his coat. He hasn’t felt so alive in years.

“You are so _fierce_ , Storybrooke’s little Saviour. Claws like the Jabberwocky - all your cuts are bone-deep.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Emma regains her footing, and it is mostly annoyance in her voice and eyes, but there- distant but distinct, an underground trickle of water beneath bare rock - there is also fear.

* * *

 

He whirls to meet her, spreading his arms wide.

“I am the Mad Hatter.” He says, as if that is all the explanation anyone will ever need.

“I know you are.” Emma says.

“Do you?” Jefferson asks her, and she can see the rough scars of the stitches on his neck. His eyes are dark and violent, and she recalls that she once thought him insane.

“You’ve seen that cartoon, bright-painted Wonderland that children watch. That is not Wonderland. It was huge, and it _bent_ itself to stop you escaping, and time didn’t work there, and neither did death.”

He turns away, and tiny snowflakes begin to fall on his shoulders as she stares, flattened against the brick by the force of his bitterness.

* * *

 

“But you escaped.” She whispers, all her fierceness gone, and he barely hears her over the whisper of the snow.

“By accident. Through the Queen’s design.”

Emma’s hands alight on his shoulders, scared out of her drunken state, and she turns him gently to face her. Jefferson isn’t sure what she is searching for in his eyes.

“But you’ve escaped that too. And you have your daughter now.”

“Yes. Yes, I have Grace.”

He relaxes a little. He always becomes calmer at the thought of Grace. She was his centre in Wonderland, the one point that stayed while the rest fell away.

And then her lips are on his, and he tastes her tears.

* * *

 

Emma ends up sleeping on his couch, her face buried in his coat - and he smells like leather and herbs and wet grass and smoke - surrounded by the looming dark of his mansion. She remembers running through it, the walls closing in, like some cheap horror movie - but if she turns her head, she can see the cheerfully winking lights of the enormous Christmas tree Jefferson bought for his daughter, and she can banish those thoughts to the past. He is different now -still a little mad, but getting better slowly, with Grace’s influence, and perhaps, even with her own. She smiles at that last, ludicrous thought, hidden in his coat where no one can see.

* * *

 

 He tells Grace to be careful of their guest, to tip-toe light as a white rabbit past Emma where she lies tangled in his winter coat on the leather couch. But Grace has other ideas.

“No, Papa, we must wake her up. We must give her a present. It’s Christmas!”

The stubborn tilt to her chin reminds him of Alice.

“But we have no presents for Emma, my little poppet. Her presents will all be at Snow White’s house, where Santa Claus left them.”

“I shall find her a present.” Grace announces, and runs swiftly from the room.

Jefferson leans over Emma, watching her sleeping face. She twitches, and frowns a little, and he snorts quietly at her seriousness.

“Do you think she will like it, Papa?” Grace whispers, padding up beside him. In her hand is a white rose, that stubborn bloom that refused to die with its brothers and sisters at the end of summer. He suspects Rumplestiltskin’s magic smoke had something to do with it.

Carefully, Jefferson places the bloom next to Emma’s face on the pillow, and remembers Alice in the Queen of Hearts' rose garden, her face flushed with adventure, and for the first time feels no pain.

* * *

 

Emma wakes to the sound of Grace’s laughter. She and her father are sprawled beneath the needles of the Christmas tree, opening presents. The scent of rose hangs heavy in the air about her, and as she sits up something falls to the ground beside her. It is a white rose, untouched by the frost, and sweet-smelling. She finds herself smiling as she sits with the flower in her hands, watching the little family under the tree. With a jolt she remembers Mary Margaret - her mother and James, her father. Are they sitting under another tree right now, waiting for her?

Jefferson feels her gaze, and smiles at her. He is wearing a Santa hat, like his daughter, and looks ridiculous.

“Merry Christmas.” She mouths silently to him, the first time she has ever said the words genuinely, to someone she cares for.

And the fact that she has others to say it to, and a _home -_ a home at last - and Jefferson watches her eyes as though he knows everything she is thinking with a lazy grin, and Emma has a sharp and sudden desire to kiss it off his arrogant face, with warmth pooling in her chest like molten honey.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 OUAT Secret Santa over on Tumblr for kayjdance.


End file.
